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Wednesday, December 5, 2012

#48: The Post/Zombie Apocalypse: Is it Overused?

The
prospect of zombies and the undead has always been a theme explored
in video games since the days of the Atari 2600. The reasons for this
are obvious, since they pose an easily comprehensible threat and
provide cannon fodder for players. In recent times however, they
appear to have seen a bit of a resurgence. Many modern games have
incorporated zombies and zombie-related tropes and as a result many
people, including myself, have begun to think that zombies,
“infected,” and their ilk have grown to be overplayed, stale, and
increasingly uninteresting. Having said that, I have recently
finished a game that has made me rethink my sour opinion on the
subject. That game was Telltale's adaptation of The
Walking Dead, available now on the PC, the 360,
and the PS3 via their respective online stores. After playing the
game, I appreciated the zombie apocalypse (and general
post-apocalypse) setting much more than I used to. The realization
came that this setting is stagnating not because it is begin
overplayed, but because game developers have not done anything new or
different with it until now. This week, in a long overdue article, I
delve into why this is and how it may be fixed.

First,
we need to have a discussion on the zombie apocalypse and what it
does. A zombie apocalypse is exactly what it says on the tin, it is a
fantasy apocalypse scenario where, due to either supernatural or
biological/scientific influences, the dead are somehow reanimated,
causing the collapse of society as a whole and ushering in a new
world order. This is a subset of the post-apocalypse setting, where
the world as we known it is fundamentally changed and significantly
set back due to some catastrophic incident or scenario (like
zombies). In these types of settings, there are not very many types
of plots that a writer can utilize. The only overarching plot lines
that this kind of setting can support are typically as follows, but
could include more.

The
“Fight for Survival” where an individual or group has the goal
of making it by from day to day. Typically, this will involve
finding some kind of shelter, gathering food, water, and supplies,
and dealing with threats to one's safety or supply cache.

“Rebuilding
Society” where the individual or group has typically finally
etched a permanent/semi-permanent existence in this new world and
decides to start rebuilding what was lost, forming cities,
cultivating land, banding groups of people together, and
establishing infrastructure and government. This is all done in the
hopes of bringing back some semblance of law, order, and stability
that was lost in the apocalypse.

The
“Power Fantasy” in which the player is thrust into an apocalypse
and told to just go wild and kill as many things (living or undead)
as they possibly can. The protagonist has a large skill set and
great physical prowess and/or a large arsenal of weapons and gadgets
that can handle a wide variety of situations. The plot will
generally be bare-minimum or fall into one of the previous
categories and will exist for no other reason that to give the
protagonist an excuse for racking up a large kill list.

Compared
to other types of settings, this is a very small list, even when
compared to other settings that are often used, like sci-fi or
fantasy. Those settings allow for plots involving political intrigue
between nations, world-spanning adventures, and even plots on a
smaller scale like murder mysteries and revenge stories. This lack of
plot types in itself is not really a significant problem. The true
issue is one that lies within the sphere of video games: the plots
are almost exclusively of the “Power Fantasy” variety. Out of
most of the modern day games that involve zombies that come to mind,
there is a disproportionately high number of zombie-murder-shotgun
simulators. What my mind calls forth when I think of zombies are the
likes of Left 4 Dead, Dead Rising, Resident Evil, Dead Island, and
the zombie mode in the Call of Duty franchise. In all of these games,
the zombies are nothing more than an obstacle that players point and
shoot at until it falls over. This is what leads to a feeling of
being overused and overplayed. It is not that we are using the same
setting over and over again, but that we are doing it with the same
general plot and narrative structure as well.

Fast
forward to The Walking Dead, and now we no longer have a Power
Fantasy. Instead, the designers at Telltale chose to embrace the
source material and use the “Fight for Survival” plotline with a
well developed and realistically written cast of survivors. This
enabled them to focus on small scale, highly character driven,
personal, stories where the player and his party are forced into
desperate situations and experiment with the gameplay, where players
are forced to make painful choices and bear the weight of those
choices. Emotions run high and players can often be brought to tears
when faced with the events that are unfolding in front of them. The
shift away from the standard Power Fantasy refreshes the setting,
making it new and interesting. Players never plow through tons of
zombies. Whenever the zombies come, they are presented as a genuine
threat and the best course of action is always to retreat. All these
characters are trying to do is stay alive and see tomorrow. This is
where most zombies games get it wrong. Designers forget that there
are other plots they can use in this setting and go for the standard
power fantasy. These other plot types can add a weight and emotional
backbone to the game. There is nothing wrong with a good Power
Fantasy, but gamers want more than that. As they say, variety is the
spice of life.

But
Power Fantasies are easy to craft. All designers need to do is create
a hoard of mooks and some weapons to fight them. It takes more work
than it does to think up of quality writing and good gameplay
mechanics that reinforce the other two plot lines. Aside from the
Fallout franchise and the flash game Rebuild,
which focus on the rebuilding of society in a post-apocalypse, and
The Walking Dead, where the daily struggle for survival is on
display, one would be hard-pressed to find post-apocalypse games that
are not strictly in the realm of Power Fantasy. (And yes, I am very
much aware that there is a very strong case to be made for Fallout
being a Power Fantasy. You do not need to tell me.) I would petition
game designers to branch out every once in a while and break the
mold. Do something different from that which we have all seen before
and show the creativity in all of those development studios. I know
that game designers are more than capable of experimenting with new
concepts and/or reiterating on old ones in interesting ways. I just
wish that they would show off the capability more.

2 comments:

So this is an interesting post. Again, you have a different focus than I would. You say 'developers shouldn't be afraid to use settings in new ways'. I say "developers shouldn't be afraid to use mechanics in new ways'. About the same game.

Like I mentioned on twitter, it's interesting how it took a game in a franchise established in another medium to get devs to try something new with it. I wonder why that is? :/ Probably because MOST games are 'power fantasies' of some kind, and they're only just now finding ways of making truly meaningful stories with alternate themes.

Again, I have to say that although what you're saying is TRUE, it's not particularly DEEP. I'm not sure if that's bad or not, but something to consider?

"The realization came that this setting is stagnating not because it is begin overplayed, but because game developers have not done anything new or different with it until now. "

I'll be honest, I think the Walking Dead was a one time affair. It was new because games haven't done it before, but in a broader context, if it had been a book or a film it would have been cliche. Book of Elijah, The Road, Day of The Triffids, Survivor, Quatermass. People were guessing the reveal of Ep 2, because it's just been done repeatedly in the setting (Book of Elijah is the big one in my examples)

Look at the similarities already between the trailers of The Last of Us and the Walking Dead, roughly same aged man looking after a younger girl, the real problems isn't the zombies, it's the people (I think they might have actually even have shared the same dialogue lines about that)

It was nice and what you say can be taken as a general rule to freshen up games, but not zombie games in particular. The Last of Us will come out, it will be playable interesting but already feel a bit familiar and overused and then that's it. No more space for a single other zombie story game. At least power fantasy is a gameplay thing and gameplay stays a lot fresher than story does (when challenge/thrill based)